Evil winds!, originally uploaded by Bob Goyetche.

We see them. We know them. By accident, some of them became our friends on facebook, there are websites dedicated to them.

Smoke blowers.

Some seem to think that blowing smoke up someone’s ass is a new thing, and an evil that social media has created. In fact, the expression itself comes from an 1800’s medical practice where it was thought to be beneficial to literally blow smoke into someone’s rectum to cure everything from death to the inability to get thousands of followers on twitter.

As time progressed, and medical knowledge increased (not to mention all the short-of-breath doctors and new twitter-tools), the practice fell into disuse, and the expression came to mean complementing in an insincere or extreme manner..

In attempts to “join the conversation” and “be loved by millions”, the temptation is to comment on as many blogs as possible, and possibly to write linkbait-ish posts on your own blog where you complement the crap out of A-list social media personalities on everything from their facial hair to the sermon they just delivered on their blog.

Here’s the thing, not only does it not add value, it makes you look like a smoke-blower. This, is not the desired outcome.

To join a conversation without blowing smoke, try to make sure you’ve got :

• something to add, not just a link
• a real opinion - maybe even throw in some facts
• Ideally, your own opinion - oh, this is getting harder.
• an absence of enema-helping machinery - should be easy.

Smoke Blowing ™ is the social media equivalent to the “SEO pile-on“. Go to a big name blogger’s site, and you will see 124 comments per post, most of them hoping to suck some traffic back to their little blog where they pretend the big ideas came from them.  Of those 124 comments, a discouragingly high percentage (let’s say 70%) are either SEO pile-ons or smoke blowers. The other 30% is where you want to be.

The best way to suck that traffic back, if that’s really your goal, is to comment something intelligent, and make the reader of your comment think “Hmmm, I’d like to know more about what this person thinks”..

If you’re blowing smoke, they won’t be drawn to you, or once they get to your blog, they’ll just see more smoke.

And when the smoke clears, they’ll see you’re a tool,

 Does anyone not ever get asked for advice? I don’t think so.

To you, somehow, somewhere , someone’s life experience may help you decide on what decision to make, how heavily to weigh an event, or even how to react to something that’s happened to you.

I believe in asking for advice. We all live on mostly separate time-lines, and there’s wisdom to be shared by those who’ve seen something before us. I’ve received some great advice through the years, much of which I’ve followed - though in truth I probably wish I had followed more, or at least given it more thought.

We all like to think we’re individuals, and that no one quite knows our situation/pain/left foot is hurting, etc.. But you know what I’ve found? We’re much more alike than we’d like to think, and once your get over that, navigating through life is somewhat easier.

Here’s the best piece of advice I can give to someone seeking advice :

SHUT THE HELL UP

Seems easy, doesn’t it? It’s not.

Often when getting advice, we end up defending ourselves. I’m not sure what it is, maybe on some level, we really know that the advice is right, and in fact, we knew before asking. So, we defend or come up with reasons why we didn’t follow the advice we didn’t yet have.

Follow me? By shutting up, you’ll let the advice-giver get past the advice and hopefully into why the advice giver thinks this way. THAT is where the value is. Just like in math, sometimes it’s valuable to see how an answer was obtained, not just the answer itself…

What do you think keeps advice from being received? Is it ego, fear, what?

  Photo credit:Shhh!!!!!!, by Carly & Art.

Podcasts “podfade” all the time. The term usually refers to a show that just simply stops putting out content. Often there lingers a hope that an episode may eventually be released. That lingering hope, at least for me, somehow adds pressure to release, as there’s that unspoken promise of more, and thus the nagging feeling of having something on the to-do list that just isn’t getting done.

So I killed MostlyTunes.com - My 3rd podcast, the first one where I hosted alone.  (except guest hosts).

A bit of history,

It originally started as an F-Off to early AMP (Association of Music Podcasting) rules about music content per episode. You see, at the time, Bob and AJ was about to be in AMP, but was deemed to have too much talk, and it was decided that to be a “music show”, a show should have at least 75% music content or something similar. This is December 2004, podcasting is barely 6 months old. WAY too early to start with the rules & such.. So we took our ball and went home.

Being something of a shit-disturber at times , I couldn’t leave it at that. I decided to show some people what a “music show” should sound like. So was born MostlyTunes. No talking except for song intros. 30 minutes, 97% music content. Put that in your association and smoke it. I wasn’t angry, just trying to prove a point. The thing is, the show sounded great!

A funny thing happened afterwards, MostlyTunes eventually became a part of AMP (A great bunch of people, really!!) and many of the “old guard” that tried so hard to make rules so early in the game have moved on, or podfaded or whatever.

So here we come to summer 2009, and I’ve got new projects on the horizon. So to clear the table, I wanted to give MostlyTunes a proper send off. Today I published the final “greatest hits” episode, and with that I knocked something off the to-do list.

Thanks for listening to MostlyTunes, it was a fun project and I look forward to the next ones,

There’s my last chance to user that header graphic.

 Just got the official word, apparently the judges had a tough time deciding who to award the prizes to, and could only choose three who they felt best exemplified the program. I know, I made it SO hard on them, bad Bob!

Anyway, heartfelt congrats to the winners of the challenge :

Andrea from a peek inside the fishbowl, Caroline of Parent Club and Nancy Zimmerman of Nancy Zimmerman: A Canadian Money Coach, each of whom will be receiving an iPod Touch and another iTunes gift card.

Now I could bring up the fact that only women won iPod touches, but I won’t

Am I still at it?

Actually, I am - I have to admit I’m not going to the website daily anymore, but it’s good to know that it’s there. I’m going to the gym 3-5 times a week these days on top of coaching a kids’ soccer team, but I find the mid-day stretches a nice break from the day job which mostly involves being on the phone and hurling expletives at emails I get throughout the day..

What about You??

Well,  you know who won here? A MAN! Yes! Tommy Vallier joined me on the challenge, and for his efforts (and documenting them) he gets a nifty new iPod Shuffle and iTunes gift card. Thanks Tommy! It helped to know someone was playing along! (And by the way, if you need WordPress help, Tommy’s your guy - he bills by the minute! check out his site here)

Once again I’d like to thank the CCA, for Tommy’s iPod and mine, and for motivating us to get movement into our daily routines.

We now return to regular bobgoyetche.com programming…..

One of the ways people show support for an idea is to “retweet” someone’s post.. The format usually adopted is to start with “RT”, then the user name and original tweet.

So if I really support/want to spread/want to impress CreepyNewGuy ’s tweet:

I would take what he said, add “RT” and then my followers would see what he said:

Oops! See what happened there? I retweeted something completely different, and the Twitter-gods did not smote me.

Food for thought, eh?

So, when CreepyNewGuy’s potential new employer uses “the Google” to search for his online thoughts/history/ebay purchasing habits… He’ll find out that at one point, CreepyNewGuy MUST have said he didn’t like one armed people.. It’s got to be true, it was RETWEETED!

I’m not sure there’s an answer to this, or if there really needs to be one… I tend to drop people that just RT all day long anyway…

The least you should do is set up a google alert or something so that you’ll at least know what they’re saying you said…

Days *6/7*

Two days of desk work before some time off. Back to the chair that’s my home for too many hours in a day…
how’d I do?

You know, the flexibility is where I felt the best. So I did that on the last 2 days, since I got the most out of those exercises. I think it’s important to get satisfaction from exercise, and the flexibility workout is just enough to get the blood moving and clearing the brain.

On day 6 I did lower back and calf stretching. I have a history of back trouble, so I like to work it out with out killing it.. I did some seated stretching like this :

and I alternated those with calf stretches like so:

The calf stretching was great in the middle of the day…  a great way to shake the legs up after long periods of sitting.

On day 7, I was happy to find an exercise that had also been recommended to my by a physical therapist.. Towards the end of the hockey season, I tweaked my shoulder, and certain movements were really not fun… So after my shoulder was “worked” back into place, I started doing these chest-flex-thingies in the doorway…but 1 arm at a time, it’s amazing where you feel the pull…

I rounded that out with more neck rolls and reaches, and called my fit-in-15 challenge done.

final thoughts

This was a fun challenge. I know I got something out of it. I wish it hadn’t coincided with PAB, so I could have given the blog posts a more “multi-media” feel… In the end though, what’s important is I’ve added physical activity to my daily routine, and hopefully some of you are doing that now too..

Thanks CCA, for great tips, and the motivation to carry this out!

the contest is pretty much done, but midnight on the 24th is the deadline to send me what you’ve done… Even if you don’t do the challenge, you should take a look at the exercises from the websites My Fit-in 15 or Upping My Game . It’s true, just a few minutes a day can make a big difference…

Day *4*

Now this is where the challenge got interesting. You may know that I was at Podcasters Across Borders this weekend. (Canada’s premier podcasting conference, dontcha know!)  So that brought a whole new twist to this challenge.

Well, I’ve committed to this, so I had to find a way to integrate this with my crazy weekend in Kingston. Now Kingston’s a beautiful small town, and everything needed is walking distance from the hotel. So I’m not going to cop out and say that because my car spent the weekend in the parking lot and I walked everywhere I met my goals.

how’d I do?

Certain behaviors are expected and looked forward to at these types of events. Let’s just say that the days don’t usually end with me watching “Magnum P.I.” reruns on TV and falling asleep by 10pm. BUT I knew this going in, so I was able to plan my days for it..

On saturday morning, the weather was cooperative, and I was up before many others (*I know, that’s not what usually happens*) and went for a long decently-paced walk along Kingston’s waterfront. Now early on a saturday morning, my brain isn’t equipped to do much more than the essentials, so I ended up forgetting to bring my camera. However, this is one of the views I saw, ‘cept it was earlier in the day, and cloudier…

Kingston City Hall, originally uploaded by Andrew MacKinnon.

how’d you do?

I don’t know. You didn’t tell me. *sniff* You don’t bring me flowers anymore, either.

Next, the day 5 challenge : the end of the conference and another long drive

You can still join in, send me an email (fitin15 @ bobgoyetche.com ) with a picture/audio/video/blog post/whatever of you trying some of the exercises from the websites My Fit-in 15 or Upping My Game . Read my instructions for the iPod/iTunes contest on the first post of this series here.

Day *3* - a travel day!

Heading to a conference friday morning by driving for three hours made  finding the time to do the challenge a challenge in itself.

how’d I do?

I probably shouldn’t have - but I did do some of the flexibility stretches while driving the car. Hey, it’s 401 - not like there’s anything visual that keeps anyone alert. I did mostly (actually all) upper body stretches, the pedals got in the way of anything else..

I also made a point of using the stairs to my room - 6 floors in the hotel, so plenty of chances to use the stairs.

how’d you do?

YOU DID NOTHING!! NOTHING!

Hmmph!

Next, the day 4 challenge : Finding time in a crazy event to exercise!

You can still join in, send me an email (fitin15 @ bobgoyetche.com ) with a picture/audio/video/blog post/whatever of you trying some of the exercises from the websites My Fit-in 15 or Upping My Game . Read my instructions for the iPod/iTunes contest on the first post of this series here.

Let’s see how day 4 goes…

Day *2*

how’d I do?

Well, I didn’t do what I set out to do - I had said I’d work on strength, but I actually shared the 15 minutes somewhat equally between strength and flexibility.

For the strength exercise, I did something I’d never tried before : wall push-ups. What are those? they look like this:

It looks almost silly, but you know what? do 10 real minutes of that and you’ll feel it! Apparently , it helps the chest muscles which are those you use when you push something like a shopping cart or a lawn mower…. So stay away from these if you don’t want to shop or mow.

how’d you do?

Ah, Tommy Vallier still at it, and gets a second entry in the contest.

Here’s where he talks about the STAIRS OF DOOM!!!
Next, the day 3 challenge : Finding ways to exercise when away from home!

You can still join in, send me an email (fitin15 @ bobgoyetche.com ) with a picture/audio/video/blog post/whatever of you trying some of the exercises from the websites My Fit-in 15 or Upping My Game . Read my instructions for the iPod/iTunes contest on the first post of this series here.

Let’s see how day 3 goes…